Friday, November 19, 2004

You couldn't make this stuff up. But someone does.

Sometimes - no; all the time - the news coming out of Bush's America seems to end with an assumed "Believe it, or not!"

After four years of this, our credulity should not be straining so hard. We should know to expect anything. I know I try. And yet still, nearly every day, I find myself being shocked.

For instance, just look at yesterday's headline from The Dallas Morning News:

SUV with Texas registration found at Fallujah bomb workshop

An "embedded" CNN crew allegedly found Zarqawi's HQ. They can assume as much, because "al Qaeda organization" was written on the wall. Seriously. We're awaiting confirmation of "Bad Guy Hideout - No Gurls Allowed!" And there was this SUV, surrounded by bags of sodium nitrate, with 15 Iraqi plates inside and a "Texas registration sticker...on the truck's window."

The most incredible aspect of this is not the truck, but that the report of its provenance could be delivered without so much as a raised eyebrow. What will it take for CNN's incurious Paula Zahn to say "Wait a minute - what the fuck?"

US commander says bin Laden can no longer direct terror operationsAnd why does Lt Gen Lance Smith, deputy commander of Central Command, say such a thing? Because "Pakistan's military has been so effective" at hemming al Qaeda leadership into the tribal areas. What he doesn't say, and what no US official, military or civilian, will admit, is that Pakistani military intelligence is virtually indistinguishable from al Qaeda. Mahmood Ahmed, the ISI chief who famously - at least to those of us paying attention - breakfasted with Porter Goss and Bob Graham the morning of Sept 11, authorized the $100,000 payment to Atta by placing cell phone calls to Omar Sheikh Saeed: al Qaeda leader and ISI asset, known as bin Laden's "favourite son."

But hey, if the US is comfortable with farming out the bin Laden file to Pakistan, just as it has done since the days of the clandestine support of the mujahideen, why should our knickers be twisted about it?

White House Warns Ukraine to Guard VotingNo, you're not dyslexic. That's really what it says. The Bush White House claims that Ukraine's first round of voting "did not meet a 'basic test' of a truly democratic process." Many Ukrainians feel the same, too. Why? Because exit polls conflicted with the results. Exit polls had projected victory for the challenger. That's what got people into the streets of Kiev by the tens of thousands.

Hello, America? Is this thing on?

Something's not working, because here's one more headline from yesterday. And this is an American story, not Ukrainian - believe it, or not!

806 Comments:

James Petras has a piece that begins"I am reading William Shirer's Berlin Diary, a journalist's account of Nazi political propaganda during the 1930's, as I watch the US 'news' reports of the violent assault on Fallujah. The US mass media 'reports', the style, content and especially the language echo their Nazi predecessor of 70 years ago to an uncanny degree. Coincidence? Of course! "a great read.

spooked, to help you figure it out: we are now in the year 1940 in Germany.We have had our Reichstag Burning, we have had our invasions, we have had our overtly stolen elections, we have had our collapse of democratic checks and balances, I can go but hopefully you now get the picture.But it doesn't feel that bad, does it? as late as 1943/44 it didn't feel that bad to most Germans either (excepting, of course, all those either dead or in prison).

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Whenever a feeling of aversion comes into the heart of a good soul,
it's not without significance.
Consider that intuitive wisdom to be a Divine attribute,
not a vain suspicion:
the light of the heart has apprehendedintuitively from the Universal Tablet. - Rumi